Maine’s Sublime Canvas of Contradictions

Edward Hopper: Haunted House, 1929
"Every August, the public library in my hometown of Blue Hill, Maine holds a wet paint auction. Local artists, some seasoned, some aspiring, go out in the early morning to find their subjects: the dawn on the mudflats; blue islands slouching across the horizon; the nostalgic white pentagon of the post office. In the afternoon, seasonal residents linger in the Biography section with plastic cups of wine, bidding on studies of water and sky to add to their collections. The landscape of Maine—glacially gouged, furred with pines—precludes other muses, offering up endless variations on its theme with every change of the light, season, and tide. It is relentlessly consumed, reproduced, and sold, albeit in a less extractive way than the mining and lumber industries once used it. The art economy and its bedfellow, tourism, have made nature more valuable unspoiled. ..."
NYBooks

Marsden Hartley: After the Storm, Vinalhaven, 1938-1939